This is from June 21, 1966, repeated on December 12, 2023. LBJ is president. Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson are Batman and Robin, but that’s obscure enough without trying to tie it into the national debt.
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Bruce and Dick may be from Batman, but I think the joke is they’re driving the economy though poor fashion choices
I thought it had something to do with being unpaid crime solvers/stoppers, saving law enforcement budgets money.
This should be filed under geezer. Back when the strip ran the Batman TV show was on ABC twice a week and making tons of money. How the merchandise sales that went with it reduce the debt I’m not sure about. Maybe the sales tax?
Wildass guess: Because Batman and Robin were, like, heroes, and thus could do things like that, despite the “funny suits”?
That TV show has a special place in our family lore because late one night in 1965, after we all had watched an episode of the show, my mother had a medical emergency and my dad called an ambulance.
In the episode, Batman is captured by The Bad Guys, strapped to a gurney, and taken up a mountain road in an ambulance. Batman manages to kick the door open, the gurney rolls out, and there he is rolling down the road, leaning left and right to not go over the edge.
My mother kept telling the ambulance guy (not an EMT — those wouldn’t exist for another couple of years anywhere, and we weren’t in Pittsburgh anyway — to “make sure the door is latched!”
As it happens, he’d seen the episode too, and he laughed and promised her he had done so.
The above anecdote could also suit “The Disorderly Orderly” Jerry Lewis film.
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Bruce and Dick may be from Batman, but I think the joke is they’re driving the economy though poor fashion choices
I thought it had something to do with being unpaid crime solvers/stoppers, saving law enforcement budgets money.
This should be filed under geezer. Back when the strip ran the Batman TV show was on ABC twice a week and making tons of money. How the merchandise sales that went with it reduce the debt I’m not sure about. Maybe the sales tax?
Wildass guess: Because Batman and Robin were, like, heroes, and thus could do things like that, despite the “funny suits”?
That TV show has a special place in our family lore because late one night in 1965, after we all had watched an episode of the show, my mother had a medical emergency and my dad called an ambulance.
In the episode, Batman is captured by The Bad Guys, strapped to a gurney, and taken up a mountain road in an ambulance. Batman manages to kick the door open, the gurney rolls out, and there he is rolling down the road, leaning left and right to not go over the edge.
My mother kept telling the ambulance guy (not an EMT — those wouldn’t exist for another couple of years anywhere, and we weren’t in Pittsburgh anyway — to “make sure the door is latched!”
As it happens, he’d seen the episode too, and he laughed and promised her he had done so.
The above anecdote could also suit “The Disorderly Orderly” Jerry Lewis film.